About Me

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Migration, Promise Of The Day Twelve

There is much
heat, little light, a lot of dogma but few sensible discussions of migration
issues at present to support all the promises being made. Some, for example, EU Referendum on Monday 6
April, point out that it is complex and doing something may amount to a number
of joined up things rather than talking big ideas. Sub Rosa discusses the human side today,
Wednesday 22nd April.

There is a
great deal of history in human movement and the geneticists can tell tales of
the unexpected; because of the limitations of sources of the long past,
historians cannot offer the certainties we want. We know about Attila The Hun and Genghis Khan
and such like, but not of many other movements that impacted in different ways.

In terms of
recent academic studies at one time population was something that straddled
economic geography and statistics with a good deal of theory but not a lot of
hard evidence about the nature and purpose of movement. A result is that demographics has been
something to avoid by serious or ambitious academics and others.

One area of
study, on the one hand a very minor field left to a few students with
particular minds has become a blood sport for a great many amateurs and stray
academics to call their own. It is
genealogy and family history. When done
well it can be quite informative but great care is needed.

For me it has
the advantage that if I use my own DNA and family history to illustrate how migration
works and if set carefully into the historical background it can be illustrative. A recent update on just one branch allowed a
demonstration of the function of extended families operating in a connected
network of families over several generations.

The very
recent digitisation of many types of record and source can shed light on many
questions. One intriguing finding is that rather than my lot being a law
abiding upright sort rather more than expected have migrated shortly after
incurring the wrath of the local magistrates.

Also, extended
and closely connected families are not always happy ones. Court records and other legal documents
indicate too often endless disputes within and between families which may seem
trivial to much later generations seem to have been the stuff of life for
earlier ones and running over decades at least.
One choice example in The Lady's family is the ancestor who attempted to
gaol the President and Fellows of Magdalene College, Oxford.

A number of
his extended family were given free tickets to Australia after burning the
local workhouse down. The joy of this is
that the Magistrates in question were closely connected to another extended
family of mine. The evidence suggests
that this was not the end of the matter, the people sent away carried their
disputes with them far across the sea to enliven their new families as well as
other rivalries.

Meanwhile,
over the water by the Mountains of Mourne the well researched (by others)
extensive family network of one of my eight great grandparents were shifting
large numbers of their surplus younger sons and daughters across the sea to
Liverpool.

It was not
long before they had re-established the patterns of their town lands of origin
around the streets of Everton and Bootle as well as the marriage patterns and
bickering. While these in the 19th
Century were regarded as Irish, the surnames plus the location gave strong
indications of extensive movement to and fro across the water, in the past a
norm, from all parts of the Atlantic Isles.

This may well
have been the root of many and various disputes and rivalries. Paradoxically, "mixed" marriages
only seemed to make matters worse. One
of the features of this particular migration was it went on for generations
allowing larger and larger numbers to create a new culture.

Now we call
them "Scousers", and this should be enough to warn people today of
the terrors of uncontrolled migration of persons unwilling to be diversified. Years later, some of these claiming to be
musicians bullied a craven BBC into letting them control its popular music
output.

What was worse
was that the money many made out of this racket was moved out to tax havens and
the British Government then forced to pay for new airports there for this new
celebrity upper class.

As for modern
migration from places which have major population increases, economic
difficulties and political and religious divisions it is now a lot easier to
travel from parts of the East and Africa than was the case from the West of
Ireland, the North of Scotland and the scattered locales of the Atlantic Isles
to the major urban centres of the United Kingdom long ago.

When they arrive
distant from their extended families and put in place both old and new patterns
of extended and connected families this is nothing new, it is just that we have
forgotten some of our own pasts and now live individually or in
"nuclear" families.

With modern
communications and media there is no real need to adjust much to new places
other than ensuring there is central heating and the relevant retail and other
services.

Why watch BBC
and ITV, other channels or American when you can see much better programmes and
features from back home wherever that may be?